The present invention is directed to an ammunition casing or cartridge casing made of a composite fiber material, which material comprises fiber materials and a bonding agent and which composite fiber material is at least partially flammable and has a high degree of strength.
Ammunition casings, which use essentially two different fiber materials, are known. U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,776, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference thereto and which was the basis for German Offenlegungsschrift 19 18 163, discloses the use of a mixture, which is made of a flammable propellant, which also functions as a type of bonding agent, and fibers made of carbon that are manufactured by carbonizing spun or woven textile fibers. These pure carbon fibers have a high strength up to a temperature of 2500.degree. and, thus, cannot in themselves burn at lower temperatures. In addition, for example, on the other hand, an ammunition casing of this type is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,824, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference thereto, and from German Patent 35 46 489. In these two references, fiber material comprises cellulose nitrate, which will burn spontaneously without producing smoke, even in the absence of oxygen. Since cellulose nitrate is subject to explosive laws, for safety reasons, its processing can only occur with aqueous slurries, which increases the processing costs.
It is also well known to use a smoke screen unit as ammunition, wherein the smoke screen unit is contained in a vessel or canister, which is, up to now, made of steel or aluminum casings, and which casings themselves do not burn and, thus, have no direct influence on the combustion behavior. However, during combustion of a smoke screen unit with such a metal casing or canister, there are disadvantages in that it is known as a chimney effect, which causes a pulsating combustion of the smoke screen unit. Long ammunition casings can, in particular, be regarded as chimneys, whereby the particles produced during combustion of the smoke screen unit are deposited on the inner wall of the ammunition casing, and thus cause a short-term blockage, whereby the blockage can only be blown out again by means of the pressure that occurs during combustion and then builds up due to the blockage. By means of this combustion that pulsates due to the temporary blockage of the ammunition casing, the dynamics of the combustion is complicated in such a way that it is essentially impossible to make any statements concerning the effectiveness of the particles that occur during combustion, and a uniform, regular smoke reaction does not occur.